ThinkFun's What's Gnu, a three-letter-word spelling game for kids ages 5-8, is way better than you are thinking. It combines a great tile dispenser with the challenge of generating possible three-letter words by claiming letters that are passing through the game in rapid succession to add to word cards that have one letter already fixed in the first, second, or third position. The game is designed for up to six players, meaning access to letters can be pretty competitive, but there are a lot to go around.

Games like this help kids make sense of spelling in an opportunistic and creative way that is a nice reversal of the word identification most reading practice entails. They also foster a sense of overall success at reading as everyone ends up with something to show for their efforts, even if they aren't the winner. Creative parents can design any number of handicaps to allow older and younger readers to play together - older selects letters only after the younger has had their pick, or giving an older child several extra cards to fill to meet her quota.

Here's a demo of how the device at the center of this game works. In this case it's used for a far less successful game, Zingo, a Bingo spin-off that can only really justify its existence by the presence of the gadget. In the case of What's Gnu, though, it uses it in a constructive way that makes the gadget feel central to the game's design.


What's Gnu? and Zingo retail for $20 and are on sale now for $12-15 on Amazon.com. In fact, the whole range of ThinkFun kids' games appear to be on sale for 25-30% off.

Jeremiah and Z have been saving up a variety of items for another "Nature Box," and spent a couple of hours this weekend putting it together. It's more varied than their previous nature boxes, and includes:

• A real or concrete-generated fossil of a small clamshell Z found in our driveway


• A tuft of animal fur from the road, probably rabbit


• Half of a geode purchased at a museum and smashed in our driveway with a hammer


• A painted shell Z bought in on a trip to Galveston with her grandmother


• A dragonfly found in our yard


• Two moths, one found on our porch and the other in our garden


• An inch-long thorny leaf tip from a century plant (large agave) from our driveway


• A dead ladybug and a dead cranefly, both from our home office


• Part of a bird's egg found on a walk in a local park

One of the most interesting developments for this project, though, was the "map" they created in the box lid to identify specimens. Jeremiah drew circles to indicate each object, and then Z labeled them, and learned in the process how the "map" (a legend, really) can show a viewer what is in the box, without directly labeling the objects themselves. We've been working a lot on maps lately - a topic we'll discuss in another post soon on Punnybop, as it all started with a couple of great kids' books - and this plays into that learning well. As Z is busy learning to write, we are also very keen to use applications that are highly purposeful and meaningful to her, and labeling something she can refer to later offers tangible evidence of the value of writing things down!

Z has been writing uppercase letters for a while now; she seems to have learned most of the letters through writing them, and is learning the sounds the letters make. But she still needs help consistently identifying of letters that are already written, and isn't really at the point where she's sounding out words.

Tactile letters are printed with a textural component that can be traced with the finger. They can help beginning readers bridge the connection between the physical movement of forming letters and the letter shapes themselves.

You can buy tactile letters, but making them yourself is more fun, and it's easy. Just write the letter neatly in glue and then let your child sprinkle sand on to the paper or cardstock, gently tipping the paper to tap off loose sand and leave a textural letter. It's even fine if you do all this yourself - unlike most preschool craft projects, the end result is the goal here, more than the process, but your child is likely to be very interested in helping, and this can help generate additional interest in using the finished letters.

The Write Start has a great suggestion to orient the letter on the side of the card that corresponds with the dominant hand. This encourages the child to hold the card with their non-dominant hand leaving the dominant hand free to trace the letters. Since Z is right-handed, we put the letters on the right side of the card.

This seems like just what Z could use right now as she begins developing reading skills.

It's a very easy project. We used blank 4x6 index cards and Jeremiah and I wrote the letters with glue, one on each card. We passed the cards to Z, who sprinkled either sand or glitter on them. Once we'd run through upper and lowercase letters, we did cards for the numbers 1-20.




Shake off the excess and let them dry.


When we started, our sand was too wet and clumpy, so Jeremiah spread a thin layer of sand on a cookie sheet and stuck in the oven at about 200 degrees. It took longer to dry than we anticipated, but came out powdery and dry. While it was "baking," we grabbed some glitter and powered through our project. When the sand dried, we made some number letters - about halfway through, Z decided she wanted to add glitter to the sand, so we did.

Z really enjoyed this project and Jeremiah and I were both surprised at how many letters she could readily identify. We anticipate using these letters to help her with her writing; sometimes she forgets how to write less commonly-used letters, and these will provide both a visual and tactile cue for her. We may also be able to use them with some simple spelling exercises.


When choosing the size of cards or paper to use, think about how you'd like to store them. Our 4x6 cards fit nicely into one of the taller cigar boxes we are always collecting from our local liquor store (Jeremiah has some fantasies about making cigar box guitars for himself and Z one day) but 3x5 cards would fit in any standard-sized recipe box!

On sale for $8 from School Zone, packaged in a tote box.